May 4, 2003

MUCH has been written about the seemingly irresistible advance of English as a global language of communication. There is plenty of evidence of this in statistics relating to Internet use, in papers given at international conferences and in the media and publishing industries. Until recently, however, the status of English in state school curricula worldwide has been simply that of a foreign language, albeit the first foreign language in a large majority of countries. English was used as a medium of instruction only in elite, private sector, international schools where students aspire to university places in Britain or the United States.

But this situation has begun to change over the past few years, and this change is gathering momentum. In countries as far apart as Mexico and Malaysia, schools and education authorities have begun to encourage, and (in some cases) even to require, that English be used as a medium of instruction in a range of subjects across the curriculum.

Some of the immediate consequences of this are predictable worries among subject teachers about their own competence in English, a demand for teaching materials in English to support the initiative and a lot of code-switching by both teachers and learners during lessons. These concerns are already being addressed in training courses.

But there are other dimensions to this fast-growing development. Within the EU, a politically correct epithet — Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) — has been coined to ensure that the focus is not entirely on English. There are parallel initiatives in some countries, including Britain, in which French, Spanish or German is used as a medium of instruction in some subjects.

In Austria, where English is being used increasingly for subject teaching in vocational schools covering the 14-18 age range, I have heard English teachers expressing concern that the students’ English will suffer through the poor models being offered by their subject teachers. It is also said that if the initiative reaches its logical conclusion, with the whole curriculum delivered in English. English teachers will effectively become surplus to requirements.

Parents have also expressed concern about equality of opportunity: students who may not be particularly good at English are being disadvantaged by the use of English in other key curriculum areas. And if every-one sticks to the old adage that you should test what you teach, there is a clear dilemma about the choice of language for tests and examinations, and the degree to which language errors might interfere with the message in students’ oral and written performance.

Finally there is also a major, and very emotive, language policy issue, namely the danger of English, with its attendant cultural and economic payload, being perceived as a more prestigious and more highly valued language than the mother tongue. This issue continues to be hotly debated in countries such as Malaysia, Bangladesh and Nigeria with their post-colonial perspectives on language but also in Turkey, for example, where English medium universities have flourished for decades. Hilya Bartu of Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, reports concerns about the “deprivation of the Turkish language from scientific and modern terminology” and the danger that “education in a second language hinders cognitive development”.

All this is pretty powerful stuff with ethical as well as practical implications. So how should teachers of English position themselves within this development? Given the momentum that is already gathering around CLIL, at least where English is the language concerned, there is little individuals can do to stop it. Perhaps it is best to see it as an opportunity and a welcome challenge.

I know of schools in a number of European countries where English teachers are working fruitfully alongside subject teachers to plan and even team-teach lessons. In some cases they are also running language improvement classes for their colleagues. There are also opportunities for collaboration in the development of teaching and testing materials.

For English teachers, coping with degrees of irritation at colleagues’ stumbling attempts at classroom English, and worrying about its impact on students who, in English classes, are taught to focus on accuracy may be a small price to pay for the enhancement in their own perceived value and status both in the staffroom and the wider educational community. How they resolve the weightier dilemmas of being potentially involved in the spread of linguistic and cultural imperialism, and in an initiative that has such apparent consequences for equality of educational opportunity will be a matter, I suspect, for individual consciences as well as protracted debate over the months and years ahead. — Dawn/ Guardian News Service

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